The problem addressed by the present invention is errors in mass manufacturing processes. Minimizing costs and improving product quality is a goal of any company developing products. To the manufacturer one of the most costly aspects in a product's life cycle is servicing product defects after the product has left manufacturing. Present methods use quality control tests on a manufactured item that are done by a single department such as a quality control department. Such tests are expensive to perform and it is also expensive and difficult to use the results. One present technology is Orthogonal Defect Classification (ODC) which addresses software defects found during development and by customers, but only software, not hardware and only defects found during development. Another known method is Orthogonal Problem Classification (OPC), which addresses software problems reported by customers, but does not address mass manufacturing industry, it only addresses software.
Another technology, Warranty Management Solutions (WMS) facilitates handling by management of warranty related data but provides no feedback to modify production. Quality Control testing products before product release provide no feedback mechanism back to production and design facilities.
In their report B. Freimut, C. Denger, and M Ketter, “An Industrial Case Study of Implementing and Validating Defect Classification for Process Improvement and Quality Management,” Proceedings of the 11th IEEE Software Metrics Symposium (METRICS 2005), Sep. 19-22, 2005, pages 19-29), provide a general description of a consulting-like engagement where they provide suggestions to a production organization based on an analysis of product defects. They do not provide any specifics of either their defect classifications or their analysis methods.
In his report, Jack Silberman, “Robot Orthogonal Defect Classification Towards an In-Process Measurement System for Mobile Robot Development,” doctoral dissertation, Tech. Report CMU-RI-TR-99-05, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, January, 1998, describes how the ODC methodology can be extended to determine and provide production process modification suggestion to an organization creating mobile robots, these robots including both hardware and software. He does not provide any description of how the ODC methodology can be used to support mass manufacturing of products that include both hardware and software. Therefore, there is a need for a solution that overcomes the deficiencies of the prior art.